Music can definitely determine the mood while watching a YouTube video.

For video content creators, it is sometimes challenging to find the right background music to add.

We also need to make sure the musical soundtrack we’ve selected is legal for us to use.

Many of us may have come across a YouTube video with the sound track removed, or discovered the video was taken down for musical copyright violations.

Don’t let this happen to your YouTube video content.

Fortunately, YouTube has a brand new music resource library available for us video content creators to use at no cost.

YouTube recently publicized on its YouTube Partners & Creators Blog, the availability of a royalty-free music audio library.

YouTube members editing their video are now able to choose from the many selections contained inside this audio library for their video’s background music.

“Download background music for your videos. For free.” This is the title underneath YouTube’s Audio Library.

I noted the word “Free” was in bold type font; this quickly captured my attention.

All of us YouTube video creators now have access to the more than 150 freely available musical soundtracks at no cost, and without any time limits for using them.

We also no longer need to worry about a music copyright when applying music from this audio library to our videos.

YouTube’s music selection continues to grow as more independent or “Indie” musical artists submit music for others to use in the YouTube Audio Library.

It is hoped the people who like a certain musical track will contact the Indie artist who created it to have them compose an original or uniquely-tailored musical track for them.

These royalty-free music soundtracks can be individually downloaded and used for any artistic reason; meaning, you can use their music for your other videos not on YouTube.

The musical selections can also be downloaded from YouTube’s Audio Library as 320 Kbps and MP3 files.

To access this free music collection, just go to your Video Manager on the YouTube front page, and click Creation Tools. You will see the new Audio Library appear underneath.

From there you can browse musical soundtracks by:

• Featured

• Genre

• Mood

• Instrument

• Duration

• Favorites

Musical genre selections include:

• Alternative & Punk,

• Ambient

• Classical

• Country & Folk

• Dance & Electronic

• Hip Hop & Rap

• Jazz & Blues

• Pop

• R&B

• Reggae

• Rock

Instrumental soundtracks include:

• Acoustic Guitar

• Bass

• Drums

• Electric Guitar

• Organ

• Piano

• Strings

• Synth

• Trumpet

Mood soundtracks include:

• Angry

• Bright

• Calm

• Dark

• Dramatic

• Funky

• Happy

• Inspirational

• Romantic

• Sad

The duration of a musical soundtrack ranges from 1 to 25 minutes.

“When you’re uploading a video to YouTube, knowing where to search for the perfect song can be tricky. We do our best to provide creators with tools to enhance their content and to simplify this process,” the YouTube creator blog says.

More music is also available under the Audio Library’s featured selections.

While in downtown San Francisco this past June, I took a short video of a couple passing streetcars.

“San Francisco Street Cars” is a (very) short video I created using a new YouTube royalty-free music soundtrack in the background. The song I chose was “Once It Starts” by Supergarage.

You can watch this video here: http://tinyurl.com/bytes-streetcar.

While editing my video, I found it uncomplicated when inserting a musical track from YouTube’s Audio Library.